I attended a law school preview day at the University of Laverne. The campus is in a decent neighborhood I spent many years living in and around. The law school main entrance is tastefully designed to look like a large glass cube with classrooms behind it on 2 floors and the law library on the 1st floor. Milling aimlessly around the front of the building were 30 or so eager young law school hopefuls like myself waiting for the festivities to officially kick off. We were then ushered in and led to a classroom where the Dean thanked us for coming and asked for questions. He listed all the usual questions on the white board behind him ('will I get a job after law school', etc), and told us that we would get them all answered by the end of the presentation. Next up one of the professors gave us a short preview of what a law class would be like as he presented us with a case and asked questions that he said he would to one of his normal classes. It was fun and the students participating handled the questions pretty well. Next up was the Dean of Admissions and they asked those who had been admitted already to raise their hands. This caught me off guard as I was under the impression that we all were there because we had been admitted but it turned out that only 3 of the 30 had been. Some of the yet to be admitted students were asking questions about their ability to be accepted despite low LSAT scores or bad GPAs and I couldn't help but think of how crushed they'd be if they ever discovered this forum. By the end of the visit all of the questions on the whiteboard had been answered to some degree or another so the Dean came back up and crossed them off. I did notice some creative accounting by one of the speakers in regards to the employment rate after graduating. He very salesman'ey crossed out the 50% of students who don't pass the bar and then proudly proclaimed that 83% of the group who did pass 'were working' (without further clarifying whether they were working at Starbucks part time or Goldman Sachs). Finally the group was thanked for coming and current 2L/3L student volunteers were made available to lead us on tours. My friend and I took one and chatted up the person who took us around the campus. He showed us a few classrooms, including a replica courtroom that was set up with the judge's desk and a witness stand and jury box and everything. I asked him about loans and he admitted to having $170,000 in law school debt by graduation. He said that his wife made a decent living and was able to help support them both as he went to law school full time for 3 years, but that he needed to take the loans out to supplement their income anyway. Another 2L said that he would have $140,000 in debt upon graduation. Now, this was an interesting experience for me because I went in after doing my homework on TLS, but I brought a good friend and law school hopeful with me who was under the all too common notion that law school = big bucks after graduation. He recently got married, had a kid, and bought a house nearby and was feeling the economic pinch. He'd been asking me about the LSAT recently because he knew that I was interested in law school, so I immediately invited him when I decided to attend this function. Out in the parking lot after taking it all in I asked him how much he was currently paying in student loan payments for his undergrad. He said that he wasn't, but that his wife was paying about $300 a month. Then I asked him to extrapolate that out to whatever the loan payment on $170,000 would be. He was kind of taken aback at the notion, but retaliated with something about how much money lawyers make. I asked him to please realistically think about how much money he thinks a fresh graduate of University of Laverne School of Law makes per month, and then tell me how he's going to make his mortgage payment after he pays the student loan payment subtracted from that amount. It was a difficult conversation to have with a good friend, but as I told him, I wouldn't have been as blunt with him if I didn't absolutely think that going would be nothing short of total financial ruin for him and his family. He literally stammered 'I... I don't get it... so what's the deal? Is everybody in there just lying to themselves? What are THEY gunna do with $170,000 in debt?'. I told him I really didn't know. We then got in our separate cars and drove home.

I read it. But it's a block of rambling incoherent babble with a TLS anti-debt stench.

Cliffs: Architecture of the school -- answered many questions during panel -- creative accounting with regards to job numbers and debt -- spoke to debt-ridden students who don't understand the peril they (or the average applicant in their position upon matriculation) will soon face -- a juxtaposition of you the informed TLS reader alongside your friend, the impressionable lad with expectations of Suits-esque lawyer salaries sold on the idea of law.

2.85 GPA and 146 LSAT medians... taking out $140-170k for schools with those medians is totally idiotic... especially for the two last year who, coming from a very regional LS in California, sat for the bars in New York. I wonder what those New Yorkers are up to... hopefully it all worked out.

They only have like four electrical outlets in each classroom and maybe a power strip if you're lucky.

Almost everything there is made of IKEA pressboard/wood

There is a nice lobby and thats about the long and short of it. You could find a better elementary public school library than ULV Law has.

Its ABA approved and its in the Inland Empire...I honestly think they might be better just turning it into an evening only law school. I can't imagine anyone who wants to go to law school full time in CA staying in the IE....but it makes a LOT of sense to stay in the IE if that is where you're working/live. I also bet that they could attract better professors if they just had to do evening classes, and perhaps a better quality of student. But, its silly for them to try to compete with all the other law schools in the area for full time students.

Heck, if they could attract a few judges/working attorneys in the area to teach classes they could probably get their students into some pretty good externships/internships/job opportunities.